The things we forget
by Aneta
Summary: And maybe there is no such thing as the right way or the wrong way; maybe it's just whatever way works for you. -Established Kensi/Callen, a look into their relationship.


**Just another one-shot from Kensi's POV. I'm not posting it in 'Already Gone,' because I feel like the tone of their relationship is a little bit different here. A little lighter, maybe? Definitely farther along, in any case. **

**Let me know what you think! **

Disclaimer: I do not own anything NCIS Los Angeles related, I promise.

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_Kensi_

I love you like lazy April mornings and the sweet, jagged layers of sun that filter through the blinds I have placed behind my bedroom window. The bedspread is worn and often times finds itself wrapped around your stiff shoulders by the time morning breaks and my alarm sounds. I trace its pattern, as you whisper broken things to me in the early hours, when we should both be long since asleep.

And I talk a lot about quiet things, because I find myself fascinated by how much one can lose without saying a word. So you tell me that I am the most honest when I am dreaming in return. Tongue-tied and empty handed and you believe me anyways, so I take in your winding histories and countless names as if I know each and every one personally. And I am holding onto something that is not mine in hopes that one day, it will be.

So every moment is wrong, and every movement is wrong, and there is so little to be right about, and yet, you _are_.

Maybe that is what amazes me the most.

Because I have felt the rough skin that reminds me you should be cold and blue somewhere very far from here, and I shiver even when I know it's coming. You see my scars and sometimes I tell you what they mean. But more often than not, I pretend that they are not there, and that I do not remember the dirty people with twisting names that loom in memories I have forgotten to forget. And there is a fire that blazes and you try to say nothing, because you are always looking for answers that I have not yet found.

I always overlook how badly I want to fight back.

And usually it is because you wake up sometimes, eyes open wide and a hand half-reaching for something, or someone, only you can see. So I push you back down gently and wonder if you will spend the rest of your life arriving just a little too late to keep your eyes closed. I never ask what you are thinking of, and have found myself waiting up beside you, if only to assure myself that underneath all the terrible fear and pounding loss, you are still there somewhere. But I find that even the hearts that hurt, never really stop beating.

I tell you one night that I have this gasping hole in my chest, and that I used to wonder if it would one day eat me alive. You say that you used to think that this world was so much more than you eventually found it to be. And I think we both believe that there is something to be said for early mornings and bitter goodbyes.

Sometimes, when there is time and when there is the need, I tell you stories of barefoot summers and accidental New Year's kisses. I remember climbing trees and falling from old wire fences, the sweet smoke from my father's cigars, and the low voice of my mother before the kitchen fell silent with her absence. Those flawless thoughts of a girl who had never even considered that things would not always be as easy as that.

You speak much slower than I, because you have always been more cautious. And there are mentions of men and women you would have given anything to stay with, and the few that kept you close. Brothers and sisters that often blur together until their names and their faces are all just aching things you keep locked away. And there are no favorite people, no single moments of wonder, just sentences that string together into a past that does not make sense to your tired mind.

Eventually, I begin to understand that we are all seeking forgiveness for the people we have become, for the feelings we stole, for the silent promises that will never add up.

Eventually, I begin to open my eyes and find your arms wrapped around me as if you were afraid I would leave for warmer places and brighter people when you were not awake enough to slow me down.

And this is not an easy love, and this is not a first love, by any means. But it is pulsing and wanting and real enough to keep us from falling apart when everything else cannot seem to hold it together. So I remind you what you are worth and you give me something to work for, and this is a balance that depends on our neediness and our desperate attempts to not be alone when the streetlights go on. And sometimes I think we are both still moving around these fragile pieces and trying to make them work without forgetting what we're working for.

So you tease me about my messy apartment, and help me put up Christmas decorations when the sky turns gray and foreboding. And you wrap me up in your shaking arms and rest your face in the crook of my neck, and I will go the grave knowing that I will never feel more alive than that. I give you a place in my home that eventually becomes yours as well, and you give me a place in your heart I don't remember ever not belonging to. And you laugh at the wonderful stories I tell and I get the blood out of every shirt that you hand me with a sheepish, sorry smile.

And I had all the right words, and all the right explanations. But they all ended up as feelings, which are much harder to say, and much harder to understand. So they stay buried behind flickering memories and the ever-present hum of everything that I have yet to do.

Maybe you will always be lost in translation. Maybe I will always be trapped inside everyone I've ever loved. And maybe there is no such thing as the right way or the wrong way; maybe it's just whatever way works for you. Whether or not you have hours or minutes or hundreds of years, you will find that there is so much time left to say the simple things that often leave us behind.

I look up from the dizzy moments of just surviving in this breathing world, and realize one day, in the gaps of silence, that you must have a hold on someone in order to let them go.


End file.
